A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The invention disclosed herein relates to the field of collaborative computing. More particularly, the invention relates to software tools for improving collaborative working among a group of people working together on a project or task involving a defined set of documents.
Crafting a document or presentation involves interactions between many core participants, their assistants and administration staff. Their frequent discussions cover issues such as the language, design, content, shape of the argument and where to look for critical information. Co-authors depend on tacit knowledge about which people need to be involved in the process, and what the document needs to convey when completed. In addition, co-authors are usually good at understanding social context and organizing interactions among group members. Authors typically know what information should be included in a particular document, which people ought to be informed when changes are proposed, and which people ought to see the document before it is signed or presented.
To get all the right people involved in such an activity might seem to call for workflow support. However, the inventors believe that actual work in these settings does not map onto pre-established, sequential format typical of most workflow systems. Rather, software needs to shift the focus from workflow support to tools that explicitly represent some of the information collaborators need, and enable them to find, connect and collaborate with the right people at the right timexe2x80x94all while allowing the collaborators to work in their primary work environment. Furthermore, traditional workflow tools generally do not support simple one to four step workflows under user control.
Tools to support awareness and the availability of people and documents, ad hoc workflow, document history monitoring, and synchronous and asynchronous collaboration all are critical to successful collaboration on documents. Co-located collaborators already make use of informal awareness, planning, history monitoring, and synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, but do not have adequate integrated software to support these activities. Distributed collaborators have trouble with simple issues like assuring everyone has the same version of a document, let alone being able to collaborate flexibly while co-constructing documents. Support for these collaborative processes must enable an author to focus on the document itself, working within that application, while collaborating with others through tools easily accessible at the periphery.
Early research on document construction explored individual cognitive processes. Subsequent investigations described how co-authors subdivide the document construction process. More recently, new ethnographic techniques have been developed and employed to understand the practice of document retrieval and re-use in activities such as litigation. Technologies to support collaborations about the writing process, such as awareness of a collaborator""s activities and roles, and technologies to support specific writing processes, have been developed. Some of these technologies are described in the following references, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference into this application in their entirety:
Baecker, R. M., Glass, G., Mitchell, A., and Posner, I. R. xe2x80x9cSASSE: The Collaborative Editorxe2x80x9d, refereed videotape presented at the 1994 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 1994.
Blomberg, J., Suchman, L., Trigg, R. xe2x80x9cReflections on a Work-Oriented Design Projectxe2x80x9d Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (Chapel Hill, N.C., October 1994) ACM press 99-109.
Dourish, P., and Bellotti, V. xe2x80x9cAwareness and Coordination in Shared Workspacesxe2x80x9d Proceedings of CSCW ""92, (Toronto, November 1992), ACM press. 107-114.
Ellis, C., Gibbs, S., and Rein, G. xe2x80x9cDesign and Use of a Group Editorxe2x80x9d. In Cockton (ed.), Engineering for Human-Computer Interactionxe2x80x9d, North-Holland, 1990.
Leland, M., Fish, R., and Kraut., R xe2x80x9cCollaborative Document Production Using Quiltxe2x80x9d Proceedings of CSCW ""88, (Portland, September 1988).
Palfreyman, K., and Rodden, T. xe2x80x9cA Protocol for User Awareness on the World Wide Webxe2x80x9d Proceedings of CSCW 96, (Boston, November 1996), ACM press. 130-139.
Sharples and van der Geest. xe2x80x9cThe New Writing Environment: Writers at Work in a World of Technology.xe2x80x9d Springer-Verlag, London, 1997.
A group working on a document needs to control its membership while maintaining flexibility, allow members of a particular group to know whether their colleagues are on-line, determine those colleagues"" status (for example, whether they are currently online and active or inactive), alert them to a personal message, and initiate collaboration on a document, through chats, phone calls and ad hoc workflows.
There is therefore a need for a comprehensive software tool that provides these various functions in an integrated manner.
It is an object of the present invention to solve some of the problems described above with existing collaboration tools and systems.
It is another object of the present invention to extend collaboration on documents to distributed teams.
It is another object of the present invention to allow users access to a comprehensive set of collaboration tools while working on a document.
It is another object of the present invention to improve awareness of activities of a group of authors working on a group of documents involved in a project or task.
The above and other objects are achieved by a method implemented on a computer and corresponding software tool stored on a computer readable medium such as a hard, floppy or optical disk or other conventional storage media for improving awareness of a status of a task. The method involves the step of storing a first set of data representing a plurality of users involved in the task and a second set of data representing a plurality of data objects such as documents or database files involved in the task. The two sets of data representing users and data objects may be generated by one of the users by selecting a group of users from among a larger group such as in a corporation, firm, or other organization, and selected a group of documents or other data objects from among a larger set of such objects stored in a central location.
The method further involves receiving task-related data representing activities performed by each of the plurality of users involved in the task on the plurality of data objects involved in the task. In some embodiments, this data about activities is received on a client computer used by one of the users in the set from a server. The server runs server software, such as LOTUS DOMINO available from Lotus Development Corp., which manages a set of documents, monitors and stores actions performed on the document, replicates and distributes documents as they are revised, and facilitates communication among clients. The server software thus monitors activities relating to data objects performed by clients and distributes the revised objects and data relating to the revisions to the clients.
In accordance with the invention, the method further involves displaying activity data in two separate windows or regions of a screen display simultaneously. A first region contains a list of the plurality of users in association with an activity performed by each of the users concurrently or most recently. The second region contains a list of the plurality of data objects in association with an activity performed upon each the plurality of data objects concurrently or most recently. These two windows thus provide comprehensive awareness of the current or most recent activities performed by the users in the group as well as the current or most recent activity performed upon each of the documents involved in the project or task.
In accordance with embodiments of the invention, the user accessing these two windows may also access an application program on the client computer to review and manipulate one or more of the documents involved in the project. In addition, some embodiments provide integration of the twin windows and application program with additional collaborative tools, such as chat, document sharing, document history, electronic notes, email, etc.
As a result, the present invention provides a people and document centered awareness tool which serves as a entree into a comprehensive suite of collaborative tools for easy and effective collaboration on a project.